With Trump, Beijing trumps Washington

The election of Donald Trump to the White House now paves the way for Beijing to exert more influence and control in the region. It will also leave long-time allies nervous, and puts the US at economic and strategic risk, writes Hunter Marston.

With the election of Donald Trump, American voters voiced support for “America-first” isolationism, rejecting the likely continuation of Barack Obama’s liberal internationalism. Southeast Asia will almost certainly shift to the backburner and lose the high level of attention it received during the Obama years. The implications for regional trade and security are grave, and mostly negative.

Trump has openly questioned the value of US alliances in Asia and even suggested that South Korea and Japan should acquire nuclear weapons to fend for themselves. This cool indifference to the security of our Asian allies belies a fundamental misunderstanding of the benefits the United States derives from overseas alliances and basing agreements, and it opens the possibility of catastrophic conflict sparked by nuclear brinkmanship.

In Southeast Asia, risk of nuclear conflict may be absent, but the withdrawal, or weakening, of the US security commitment enhances China’s influence to its south and will leave the US outside the regional trade architecture.

The Philippines, which under populist President Rodrigo Duterte has tilted away from the United States and sought closer relations with China, will likely continue in this direction – though Trump and Duterte, who has been dubbed “the Trump of the East,” may find something in common with each other, which could in turn warm the frosty US-Philippines relationship.

Meanwhile, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib has strengthened security and economic ties with China, causing concern in Washington that it is losing traditional security partners to Beijing.

Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has voiced his concern that the US is pulling back from Asia at a time when continued American resolve is crucial to stabilising the region. The country is an important security partner for the US, allowing access to American surveillance planes and an aircraft carrier, which contribute to peace in the South China Sea. It also hosts more than 3,600 American companies and enjoyed $47 billion in two-way trade in 2014-2015.

But, as PM Lee has warned, if the US fails to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership, it will be leaving the bride “waiting at the altar” and causing friends in the region to doubt not just our economic investment in the region, but the rigor of our security commitments as well.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would bring together the United States, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Brunei, Australia, and New Zealand, is all but dead in the water. There is no conceivable scenario in which Donald Trump, who has called the TPP “a terrible deal,” will take up or renegotiate the trade deal.

Meanwhile, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which includes China but not the United States, is nearing completion. Missing out on a privileged place at the centre of global growth, Asia, will be a huge drag on the US economy. It will negatively impact American exports, consumers (in the form of cheap imports), as well as manufacturing and services jobs.

Finally, President Trump will assume the White House at a moment of utmost consequence for the global balance of power, as China overtakes the United States as the world’s largest economy and increasingly seeks to extend military power outward on its periphery. Southeast Asian countries desirous of continued US engagement and leadership in the region, military and economic, may align with Beijing in droves. Decades-old treaty alliances and emerging security partnerships will suffer a blow. The Philippines’ recent pivot toward China (and away from the United States) may appear prescient if other Southeast Asian countries feel impelled to make a choice between one of the two superpowers.

Beijing should be quite pleased. Hillary Clinton, it was believed, would have taken a more assertive position on China’s now-routine bellicose behaviour in its near backyard. Donald Trump, on the other hand, appears likely to look the other way and instead seek to strike a deal with Beijing. While too early to conjecture what such a deal may look like, it would most likely entail the US scaling down its military presence in the Western Pacific, acceding to Beijing’s territorial claims in the South and East China Seas (as well as sovereignty claims over Taiwan and Hong Kong), and refraining from criticizing China’s human rights abuses and undemocratic governance.

Beijing may feel empowered to pressure US allies and partners in Southeast Asia to cut ties with Washington. A distracted or disinterested American President, meanwhile, would be less likely to see this as a threat to US interests in Asia, and Southeast Asian countries may have little choice but to bandwagon with China for protection and economic benefits.

In the end, the US turn toward isolationism only harms American economic prospects and security interests. It also imperils the US-led order in the Pacific that has endured since the end of World War II. Donald Trump’s election signals a national mood shift in the United States away from American engagement overseas, even as an increasingly globalised world demands connectivity and open trade to compete successfully.

American allies in Southeast Asia may come to see President Obama’s rebalance to Asia as the heyday of US engagement. What comes to pass may be the emergence of a new, regional order in Asia with an empowered and maximalist China.

Hunter Marston is an independent Asia analyst based in Washington, DC. Follow him on Twitter @hmarston4.

The Clintons “born to rule”? Rubbish – Hillary Clinton’s background is middle class, and Bill Clinton’s background is below that, and he had a problematic childhood.
While Trump may not have been US blue blood, his background however is money, his father having been a wealthy real estate developer.
“People’s choice” does not necessary mean more liberal and less authoritarian, quite often, as with Trump, it was the opposite. Trumps flirting with authoritarianism, nativism and isolationism has been openly announced by himself. The article here is a logical analyses based on what Trump has said himself during the campaign.

Well, no. Trump (or Bernie, in the past) would be a nail in neoliberal and establishment coffin. Democrats were foolish enough to kick out Bernie and chose Clinton at a time popular opinions were anything-but-establishment. As for SEA, t’s EXACTLY American ‘engagement’ that is driving the region toward war and chaos. Americans love us-vs-other narratives and enjoy confrontation rather than resolution. From Golden Triangle to Vietnam War, we have had enough of American meddling here. China, throughout its history, never had an instance of colonizing and setting up bases in other countries. And Beijing’s infrastructure projects today do a far better job at alleviating poverty than all American aid and NGOs which are more negative than positive.

I can’t help feeling that the wisest words in this post are “while too early to conjecture”.

US politicians, like those in most democratic countries, make all kinds of statements and promises during their campaigns that they abandon on being elected. Had Hillary Clinton won, for example, it is very likely she would have dropped her opposition to the TPP and reverted to her earlier view that it was “a gold standard” for trade agreements.

Trump is unusual in that he couldn’t maintain consistency even during his campaign. Which of his assorted commitments will be upgraded into policies to be implemented after his inauguration two and a half months from now? It is impossible to say. His gracious remarks about Clinton after his victory have shown a side of his that was rarely visible during the campaign. His words could have been composed for him by golden-tongued Obama.

Trump has surrounded himself with uninspiring, if not downright frightening, advisers. But it is “too early to conjecture” whether the normal Republican think-tankers and policy intellectuals who staffed the Reagan, Bush 1 and Bush 11 administrations will stick to a hands-off pose vis-a-vis Trump’s administration. If they did, it would be the third presidential term in a row for them to be out in the cold. Most of them, the kind of people to fill the under-secretary, assistant secretary and deputy assistant secretary posts in government departments, don’t differ enormously from their Democratic rivals, on policy towards Asia as well as on alliance relationships.

Maybe, of course, Trump won’t want them. But we won’t know that for perhaps as long as two and a half months.

I believe formation of policy under Trump towards SEA and North Asia will be quite different than under the Obama administration. While the Obama administration seemed to have followed the state department, Trump most likely with follow the recommendations of the military and the business community – both whose tendency towards getting into bed with authoritarian regimes is well known. While this may relieve the US from stressful relations and difficult engagement with many the region’s more authoritarian governments – efforts for more liberal democracies in the region will have a very hard time, and a lot less US support.

The world’s no. 1 superpower, the U.S. of A, will now be led by Donald Trump, a most disgusting human being who publicly espoused xenophobia, misogyny, racism and intolerance during his campaign now stuns the world into a state of fear of what a US President Trump will unleash with his malicious bent.

The world should brace itself for Trump’s first 100 days, and, the coming global trade war.

Trump’s ‘Contract with America’ (still appears in Trump’s website) includes ( in addition to the Mexican wall) among other things the following:

* to renegotiate NAFTA or withdraw from the deal under Article 2205
* to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership
* I will direct my Secretary of the Treasury to label China a currency manipulator (the trigger for coming global trade war)

* I will direct the Secretary of Commerce and U.S. Trade Representative to identify all foreign trading abuses that unfairly impact American workers and direct them to use every tool under American and international law to end those abuses immediately

* To begin removing the more than 2 million criminal illegal immigrants from the country and cancel visas to foreign countries that won’t take them back

* End The Offshoring Act. Establishes tariffs to discourage companies from laying off their workers in order to relocate in other countries and ship their products back to the U.S. tax-free.

If Trump delivers on the above, a global trade war ensues. If Trump reneges on many of his ‘contract’ first 100-days promises . . . the anger by the very people who voted Trump into power could explode into disruptive nation-wide protests or worse.

(It is California Chris B., not Texas, who seriously plans to secede.)

Trump’s isolationism could mean fewer foreign-policy mistakes than Clinton would have made. If Japan and China go to war for example, Trump could stay out and watch them weaken each other, instead of automatically escalating it into World War III.

VichaiN – good to hear from you. U have been sorely missed. At least if California seceded one assumes there would not be confusion about the independent Republics’ name. Or would EVEN THAT become Californication, with Red Hot Chillie Pepper’s providing the seceded State’s national anthem ?

RN England – what makes you think Japan and China would go to war ? It is quite possible Trump will unleash Japan – so that one day Japan would switch to China’s side against the US. This underground sentiment is very, very strong in Japan. There is a very strong – increasing – desire in Japan : to reverse the verdict of the last Pacific War.